10 Gadgets Moms Love the Most

Mother's Day is a big deal. It's a day set aside for celebrating the woman that bore you, raised you, potty trained you, put up with you, and somehow still manages to love you. There's a lot at stake as far as gifts are concerned. If you screw up your Mother's Day present, there's a fairly good chance that your mother will completely disown you, or that your derelict kid brother will garner Most Favored Kid status for the sixth year in a row. A tablet, a new phone, or an e-reader like the Kindle or Nook is a great way to go for Mother's Day. Trying to win the Mother's Day gift lottery is like trying to win the Olympics — except you can do it with minimal preparation and maximum slack, provided that you take our gifting advice. Giving your mother a gadget says, "I love you, Mom. And I want you to stop churning butter and reading newspapers and get into the 21st century. Also, I'm better than your other children." Check out the top 10 gadgets that your Mom will love the most.

Move over, soccer moms. iMom is on the loose! Whether it's an iPad, a Blackberry Playbook, or one of the other weird knockoffs, a tablet is the No. 1 (with a bullet) way to go for Mother's Day. While you'll want to show your real love by getting her an iPad 3, there are several more affordable tablets for the cost-conscious kid. Sleeves and mods aplenty can make this gift both beautiful and Mom-friendly. Sign her up for Pinterest, teach her what a hashtag is, and download Draw Something, Flipboard, and Angry Birds before you give it to her for extra brownie points, and your Mom will be sending you status updates, irrelevant articles, and pin boards in no time flat.

Second only to bringing her into the touch-screen world of the tablet, your Mother will love you for replacing her clunky '90s desktop with a MacBook Air or a Netbook. Moms love to feel connected, so be sure to insult her intelligence by making comically large icons on the desktop with links to e-mail, Facebook, and your personal blog.

If your mother lives in perpetual fear that she'll be attacked at dusk in a suburban mall parking lot, and there's nothing you can do to convince her otherwise (it's OK — there's nothing any of us can do, really), try equipping her with the latest in stun gun technology: a fake cell phone that shoots 5 million volts. It looks like a cell phone, but this bad boy can shoot a message to any would-be attacker, or even those neighborhood-roving Jehovah's Witnesses she's always complaining about. Bonus points if you don't tell her it's a stun gun and ask her to "bump fists to trade contact info" with your kid brother.

If your mom is a reader, or just a gadget girl, she'll love the gift of electronic books. Get her an Amazon Kindle or a Barnes and Noble Nook, and load it up beforehand — just to prove you care. Great books for Moms include: Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Norah Ephron, Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay: And Other Things I Had to Learn as a New Mom by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, and anything by Chelsea Handler. Bonus points for buying her any book on quarter-life crises and annotating relevant passages with quips that eternally absolve her of any guilt she might have about why you're having trouble making it in the real world.

If you're perennially single, and your Mother reminds you constantly that she's waiting on you to have grandchildren, this is quite possibly the worst gift you could buy for your Mom. But if you're not the most disappointing child in the whole wide world, there's a plethora of camera types you can buy for your shutterbug Mother. Get her started on Instagram by buying her a camera phone, or get her one of the cool, vintage-looking Polaroid cameras. A third option is to finally help the woman go digital, and get her a professional grade Nikon or Canon DSLR. Bonus points for taking a bunch of pictures of you holding up handmade signs that say "I [Heart] MOM," or giving her a camera that's full of candid shots of you, just going about your day. You've got a face only a mother could love, so you might as well pimp it out while you can.

Here's the problem with being such a gemstone of a child: if you buy your mom a new digital camera, you're going to have to get her a proper photo printer before your dad or your siblings outdo you. "Sure, you got a camera … but what are you even gonna do with all those pictures, Mom? Where are you going to put them? People won't be able to see them! There's absolutely nowhere on the Internet to upload high-res pics that you can share with your friends — especially not for free. That kid doesn't care about your needs, Mom!" In all seriousness, a photo printer is a great gadget for a Mother's Day gift. And with lots of portable options, she can snap and print pictures of her grand-nieces and nephews (because you haven't given her any grandchildren yet, you ungrateful child!), various family gatherings, or those weird Thursday nights at the Olive Garden that her and her fellow menopausal friends have recently started to call "Sunday School."

Louis Vuitton has hit the future. Is it time for mom to do the same? If you feel like wasting a mere $450, you can buy your mom a USB wand that you could get her at Rite Aid, but it will have a designer logo that might mean so much to the modern Mom.

So maybe she has all the gadgets she needs, but does she lug around the accompanying cords all the time, too? Give your mom's back a break with light battery backup mods for her various gadgetry. If your Mom (or yourself) is an eco-freak, you can even go green and keep her connected with a solar-powered option.

Who says that your gadgets have to be Internet-centered? Moms everywhere will love this funny little folding chair. When it's completely unpacked, it boasts an ottoman-sized leg and foot massager that can ease even the most high-strung of Mothers. And with all the stress that you're causing her being such a problem child, really, it's the least you could do.

If your Mom's an empty nester, a robot enthusiast, or just really, really weird, you've hit the Mother's Day jackpot. CB2, the "Child-robot with Biomimetic Body," was developed at Osaka University in Japan, and is basically a robot that develops at the same pace and in the same ways that human babies develop. It has 51 air-powered muscles and a creepy humanoid skin, and gets smarter over time — just like children. Or just like children should, anyway. It's the perfect gift — as needy as a cocker spaniel, but without the muss and fuss. And if you're a Lost Child, or just think your Mother raised you so well that she should function as Lord of the Baby Learning Robots, this gift is a sure-fire way to impress the woman that bore you. Nothing but the best (and creepiest!) for your beloved Mom. Happy Mother's Day!